We will miss Golden if he leaves

by DenverIrish, Wednesday, January 22, 2025, 12:33 (15 days ago) @ BillyGoat

I agree with you. We have the most points off takeaways in over 10 years by over 50 points, I think, is the stat they said during the NC. He got beat by Chip Kelly, plain and simple, and it wasn't close. But it's Chip Kelly, not some no-name OC. I think he's one of the best OC's out there, and he had the best offensive talent to work with. I absolutely expected better from Golden, but we're kidding ourselves to think that's an easy replacement. He diagnoses the offense quickly, and we had THE BEST defense after Q1 in the P4 all season, lowest points allowed after Q1. We get everyone's best shot week after week. We get their wrinkles. I think we saw from Parker how a decent coordinator can quickly be in over his head at a place like ND. I felt like he could run an offense fine, but he couldn't make the next-level in game adjustments necessary when each week a team is throwing their best at you from watching for every weakness they can study all year just for your game.

One of Al's tendencies that Chip Kelly knew and exploited was being overly aggressive, which works against slightly worse offenses but not against the best. He has to know when to cut back on that, and he doesn't always. OSU scored a touchdown against us two years ago from the 20 yard line on third down when we blitzed I think 7 and were in man with no help - we didn't quite get there and they made a perfect throw. You cannot take that risk with a really good QB and really, really good WR's. Day basically said after the game they knew we were likely to do that and they could just chuck it down the sideline (he was more political than that). There is plenty to diagnose with what went wrong Monday night. Several times we gave up the edge where it looked like the right defensive call, and we are out of position, not playing disciplined, don't make tackles. Several times we are not in the right coverage because they knew what to call against us. Several times we played timid instead of blowing up the play like we have done in previous games - one WR screen early on I remember in particular. It absolutely sucks for it to be the NC that it happens. It would not be better if we were having this discussion after the Georgia or Penn State game though.

Getting an Al Golden level DC is difficult. I hope he stays. It's not the end of our run automatically if he leaves, but I certainly don't want him to go. It's the inevitable turnover like this though that makes repeat NC appearances so damn hard.


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